


me and you (is my refrain)

by Naladot



Category: The Princess Diaries - All Media Types
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, F/M, Fluff and Angst, Getting Back Together, Light Angst, Post-Break Up, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-22
Updated: 2018-11-22
Packaged: 2019-08-27 20:37:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,839
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16709626
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Naladot/pseuds/Naladot
Summary: When he finally gets to the restaurant to meet his friends for a birthday dinner, the television mounted to the wall has the news on, and there’s Mia disembarking from her plane, waving to the press with a practiced smile. He hasn’t seen her in five years—no, it’s got to be six, now—but he can still read the exhaustion written across her picture-perfect face.Years later, Michael reunites with the love of his life. Future-fic for first movie canon.





	me and you (is my refrain)

**Author's Note:**

> So _The Princess Diaries_ is on Netflix and I watched it and then somehow this happened? I still love Michael, 17 years later.
> 
> This fic is based solely on the canon of the first movie.

* * *

 

 

The day he turns twenty-eight, Michael concludes that God is playing a very long and cruel joke on him. The evidence is all there: the non-stop rain on his birthday, which causes a terrible leak in the venue his band booked, resulting in their show getting canceled. Lilly, who promised on their beloved dead fish (Mr. Blubber) to be back in time to celebrate, gets her flight delayed at O’Hare. And then when he finally gets to the restaurant to meet his friends for a birthday dinner, the television mounted to the wall has the news on, and there’s Mia disembarking from her plane, waving to the press with a practiced smile. He hasn’t seen her in five years—no, it’s got to be six, now—but he can still read the exhaustion written across her picture-perfect face.

 

He takes his seat at the table and laughs along with his friends, taking the beer they offer him and acting surprised when someone pulls out a cake. But every few minutes his eyes dart back up to the television. Mia outside the consulate. Mia at the Children’s Hospital. Mia at a press conference. And look, he doesn’t care, but it really is some kind of sick joke that the universe has conspired to force him to watch this on his birthday.

 

“You okay man?” someone asks. Michael blinks and rips his eyes away from the television.

 

“Yeah,” he says automatically. He can still see the television in the glass of the window across from him. Over his friends’ heads, Mia is cutting a ribbon. “I’m great.”

  
  


 

Lilly breaks into his apartment the next morning.

 

“I gave you a key for emergencies,” Michael says, rubbing the back of his neck as he pads into the kitchen. Lilly, her hair a new shade of electric blue, looks up.

 

“You got an iPhone?” she demands, holding up what looks to be his phone, still locked. He shrugs and opens the refrigerator. “I thought you were going to use that ridiculous flip phone forever.”

 

“You’re not going to lecture me about how Apple is an evil corporation?”

 

Lilly rolls her eyes. “Just because I fight for the greater good, doesn’t mean I can’t see the needs of my own brother. You getting with the technological times is a sign of real personal progress—and no, I can’t condone their business practices and you wouldn’t either if you researched it, but I can tell you’ve really made your ecological footprint smaller and one person can’t take on every single cause at once. I’m big enough to admit that. Are you going to get on Twitter?”

 

“I thought Twitter was rotting people’s brains.”

 

“If you want to start a revolution,” Lilly says, “You’ve got to go to where the masses already  _are_.”

 

Michael quirks a smile at her. “I’m not getting a Twitter.”

 

“Fine.” She holds up the phone again. “This is progress. Even if it’s an iPhone 4. They just released the 5, you know.”

 

“Are you an evil clone of my sister?”

 

“I’m just _telling you_. I’m not endorsing them.”

  
  


 

Later, when Lilly has returned to their parents’ house and he’s back home and alone, he Googles his sister and finds her Twitter in the first result. He opens up the page and her little photo is one of her at Occupy Wall Street, a sign in one hand and her other fist raised, mouth opened in a silent, unceasing protest against the man. He smiles to himself, and moves down. The first Tweet he sees isn’t from her at all. It’s from Princess Amelia, and it’s a link to some article about bringing green energy to Genovia.

 

Because Michael wants to be in on God’s joke, or something, he taps her little picture. For a few seconds he just watches the blue bar at the top of his screen as the page loads, his heart in his throat.

 

There she is: Princess Amelia of Genovia, with a blue check next to her name. Her photo is one of her laughing, somewhere on the grounds of the palace, looking so natural and at home. He remembers it too exactly, the smell of fresh-cut grass and Mia’s shampoo and the way she’d lean into him and sigh _let’s just stay here forever, okay?_

 

Michael closes his eyes and breathes. Then he sets the phone on the floor and rolls over in bed. His therapist would call this progress, maybe. Michael would just say—it’s something, all right.

  
  


 

The trouble is there just wasn’t closure. He’s got a lifetime of song material and enough neuroses to finance his therapist’s house remodel, but what he’d really like is to go all the way back in time to undo the summer when he was seventeen and Mia snuck into his room in the palace just so they could lie in bed and watch movies until four in the morning. It wasn’t even like they were having sex at that point—everything was too new and Mia was too young—but he’s still never quite reached the high of that intimacy again in his life, the way he felt with his arms under her shoulders and her breath warm against his neck as she whispered her world-sized fears in his ear, blanketed in the safety of nighttime quiet. Back then it was the two of them against the world, and he was too young and stupid to realize it wouldn’t last forever.

  
  


 

He wouldn’t undo it. Not really.

  
  


 

In the end, he makes a Twitter for his band. Because it’s supposed to be a good promotional tool. Lilly helps him pick the photo and set up their profile. He feels some weird sort of satisfaction as he begins tweeting out the info of their upcoming gigs and following the Twitters of other musicians he knows. Sure, maybe he doesn’t have a princess following him the way Lilly does. But it’s something. Some little sign that he’s making his way in the world.

  
  


 

His band has a good gig booked a few days later, after Lilly has already gone back to D.C. He’s halfway into the set when he spots Joseph along the back wall.

 

Joseph. Joseph means Mia. Mia, here.

 

His hands miss the keys altogether, striking out some kind of nonsense cacophony. His band members all look at him, _get your shit together man_ obvious in their eyes. Michael swallows hard and forces himself to keep playing.

 

Maybe she won’t even talk to him. He doesn’t know if her coming to see him and leaving without talking to him is worse than her actually talking to him, but it would be better in the short term.

 

Or maybe it’s not Joseph at all. Maybe it’s a trick of the light, one more joke in this long set-up for the moment when he finds himself a cosmic punchline.

 

Then he spots her, perched at a table with her hands folded around a beer. She isn’t really smiling, only almost. Somewhere far away, he can hear his own voice belting _how can I miss you when you’re still here next to me_.

 

Maybe she won’t realize this song is about her. But he’s never been that lucky.

  
  


 

She’s backstage after the show, waiting in the sterile fluorescent-lit hallway, utterly out of place. She’s too beautiful for a place like this, he thinks. His heart stutters painfully in his chest.

 

“Hi,” she says. “Great show.” She gestures somewhere in the direction of the door he just came from.

 

Michael’s bandmate points a finger at her. “You look really familiar.”

 

And then Michael comes back to himself, remembering. Remembering how this goes. He steps forward, shielding Mia from view as best as he can. “Let’s go somewhere else,” he says.

 

They move to the alley outside. He clocks six security guards, four in uniform and two in plain clothes smoking cigarettes at the far intersection. Mia keeps looking at him, he can feel it, but he still can’t quite accept that she’s here and this isn’t some vivid dream that’s going to leave him feeling vaguely unsettled in the morning, suffering ghosts of a distant past.

 

“Look, I—I know I shouldn’t have come here,” she says, fumbling in her purse. “But I, um—I saw that you tweeted you’d be here and—wow, I can’t believe I just admitted to Twitter stalking you—”

 

Michael really can’t think of words. He’s looking at Mia, and he knows Joe is looking at him, but he can’t come up with a damn thing to say.

 

“Anyway,” Mia says. “I guess I should go.”

 

They all stand still for an extended moment. Michael is pretty sure he can hear the whole universe laughing.

 

She turns toward the car.

 

“Mia,” Michael chokes out. “Can we talk?”

  
  


 

They go to the consulate after Mia confers with her team about what location will be the most secure. Of course it’s the consulate; it was the consulate before they even had the conversation. It’s not like he and Mia are going to go to a bar or a coffee shop to reminisce about the past. That was never an option.

 

They pass the drive mostly in silence, Mia looking out the window and Michael looking at the calluses on his fingers. In another life he would have reached over and tangled their hands together, and she would have given him a shy smile and maybe a wink, if she was feeling goofy. In another life, something another Michael lived.

 

The consulate is exactly as he remembers it. Very old, very pristine, very well-guarded. He follows her up the stairs and back to her bedroom—always a step behind, except she doesn’t even question it, now, her shoulders back and her head held high. She closes the door behind them and immediately kicks off her high heels.

 

“So,” she says, looking at him.

 

“So.”

 

“You look good.” She moves into the room, turning on lights as she goes. Michael stuffs his hands into his pockets and follows. “Lilly said you’ve got a record deal.”

 

“Maybe. It’s in the works.” He shrugs. “Not guaranteed yet.”

 

She gives him a look so familiar he feels his breath catch in his chest. “It’ll happen.”

 

He holds her gaze. What is he doing here, in this room, revisiting all these things he’d sworn to leave in the past? He should say this. He should get out of here before he gets his heart ripped open all over again.

 

What he says instead is, “You look stressed.”

 

“Well,” she says, lifting her eyebrows, “You know we’re the last European country to still have diplomatic relations with Taiwan—besides the Vatican, of course—and China keeps breathing down our neck over it, and it’s like—you know I don’t like to be bullied, but I also don’t like to be uninformed, so here I am reading a massive amount of East Asian history and meanwhile there’s some really shady stuff going on with the elections in Efansa and I got in trouble for talking about it in a press conference with reference to Genovia’s ‘colonial past’ creating Efansa’s present, but I mean, _that’s what happened_ —I can’t just go up there and not acknowledge the evils of colonialism, but it really didn’t go over well, and—wow, I am so sorry.”

 

She stops and presses a hand to her brow. She chews her lips and shakes her head slowly, eyes closed, then finally looks up at him.

 

“You didn’t come here to hear about politics,” she says with a polite smile.

 

Michael grins in spite of himself. “I mean, I figured it was probably going to happen.”

 

She freezes for just a second. And then she laughs, both relieved and exhausted. “Comes with the territory, I guess.”

 

“Yeah.”

 

She sinks down into a chair and looks up at him. “I’m sorry, Michael. I know I shouldn’t have gone to your show.”

 

“Why did you?”

 

“I just . . .” She shrugs, her whole self at once horribly beautiful and heart-achingly sad. “I just wanted to see you.”

 

He takes the seat across from her and tries to process his thoughts as they click forward, one by one, none of them very impressive or even very relevant. “I thought you were dating the Duke of France?” he says finally.

 

She rolls her eyes. “Prince of Denmark. We didn’t have that much in common.” She smiles, then inclines her head toward him. “What about you?”

 

He hesitates for a moment, just looking at her. They’re getting too close to the past, and he’s probably supposed to keep this pleasant and professional. But it’s late, and he’s been hurting for too many years to stick with protocol.

 

“Do you remember when we broke up,” he says, “And you said, ‘I hope you never find anyone else to love you ever again?’”

 

She winces. “Right. Sorry about that. I didn’t mean it.”

 

“Well,” he laughs, “Maybe there really is magic in the Renaldi family blood. Because it came true.”

 

She takes this information in slowly. First she smiles, probably because his tone was joking. Then she gets it, and her smile fades.

 

“Michael,” she says. “I’m sure that—you know—”

 

“It’s okay, Mia,” he says. “You don’t need to worry about me.”

 

He realizes that the past has come up and slammed into the present only after the words are out of his mouth. They sit there in silence, looking at each other, neither one sure of what to say.

 

“That’s easier said than done,” she whispers.

 

He brushes a hand through his hair and sighs. They have now arrived at the punchline of God’s great cosmic joke, which goes like this: Michael once again tells the love of his life that there’s no way for them to be together.

 

“I don’t know why you came to my show tonight,” he says. “But Mia, you know—you know I can’t—”

 

He doesn’t finish his sentence. Maybe she didn’t come to his show because she’s still in love with him the way he is with her. Maybe she isn’t asking for all that. It’s been six years, after all. They should have moved on by now.

 

She places her hand over his. “Michael,” she says in a quiet voice.

 

He looks up.

 

“Just stay the night.”

  
  


 

It’s easier in the dark, with his body tucked around hers, to really talk. He’s always had a problem with talking, preferring to keep his thoughts safely hidden in his own head. Once they’re out in the world, who knows what people will do with them. Songs are different, because songs make people _feel_ something. Songs are easier than trying to articulate all these things that keep him up late at night, the emotions that weigh heavy on his chest.

 

“I didn’t really mean it,” he says into the dark. “All those things I said before I left.”

 

“I know,” Mia says. Her fingers brush over the back of his hand, along his arm.

 

“It’s just—I wanted you to live your life. Because you—you can do anything. I never wanted to hold you back.”

 

“I know.”

 

She turns over to face him. She’s just barely visible in the dark, but he can see enough of her to know he’s going to remember this forever, her face carved into his thoughts, taunting him at odd moments when he should be thinking of anything but her.

 

“Was that song about me?”

 

He laughs. “They’re all about you, Mia.”

 

She moves closer to him. He curls tighter around her, well aware that this might be the last time in his life he ever gets to hold her.

 

“So what I hear you saying is,” she says softly, her hand warm on his chest, “You’re—you’re still in love with me? But—” She takes a deep breath, like she’s gathering her courage. “You still can’t live this life.”

 

He doesn’t say anything. He doesn’t know what to say. This has always been the problem—how can he possibly be with Mia when that would mean also being with the Queen of Genovia? It’s the same decision her mother made, after all. He ran into Mia’s mother at a coffee shop once, four or five years ago, and she said _If I could do it all over again, Michael, I might have chosen a different path._

 

He brushes his fingers through her hair. “You know I’m not cut out for this.”

 

“I don’t know that,” she says. “You’re the only one who ever thought that.”

 

This is clearly not true. He can pull up any tabloid article from 2003 to 2006 to prove to her that there’s a whole world of people out there who can see what she always refused to. A princess deserves an equal partner to share her life—not a scruffy musician with anxiety.

 

“Mia,” he sighs, “Why did you come to find me?”

 

She falls quiet, playing with the buttons on his shirt.

 

“Because I never stopped loving you,” she says. “And I just had to see.”

 

“If it was the same for me?”

 

She rolls onto her back and props her arm behind her head. He commits all this to memory: the rhythm of her breathing, the scent of faded perfume on her skin, the sensation of her warmth against his skin.

 

“It was a stupid thought,” she says into the dark. “And I’m sorry.”

 

There it is: his heart is shredded to pulp once again. And just like before, she’s a thousand miles away while she’s next to him in the same bed. He doesn’t understand why he always ends up repeating this same refrain.

  
  


 

In the morning, he goes back to his empty apartment and falls onto his bed. The ceiling fan turns slowly above him, beating along with the rhythm in his head. He’s got a song brewing, something cynical and wounded, the kind of thing that makes girls in the crowd obsessed with him and his band members worried about him. He’ll never admit it, but all that attention feels like a hollow substitute for the life he turned down (twice, now). Who knew that all the things he was so afraid to lose would seem so pointless in retrospect?

 

His phone rings. He picks it up without looking. “Hello?”

 

“I just spent an _hour_ on the phone with Mia doing damage control, Michael. She’s been doing so well and you just undo years of painful progress with one night’s conversation? I got off the phone and I had to ask myself, is my own beloved brother actually a selfish asshole?”

 

“Lilly—”

 

“I don’t know where you get off acting all woe-is-me when you can never seem to see the big picture. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t think you’d make a great politician, either, but what I just don’t get is why you seem so determined to force the both of you to suffer indefinitely just for—for what, actually? You don’t even _like_ your current band.”

 

“That’s not—”

 

“And if Mia were, I don’t know, really Type A or something I guess I could see it, but you’re actually freakishly compatible and if you can go _six years_ and still be all like ‘oh my god we love each other’ but the only thing holding you back is that you don’t want to be in the public eye—dammit, Michael, that is such a selfish thing—”

 

“It’s more complicated than that.”

 

“Is it, though? Is it really? Can you get out of your own damn way for once?”

 

Michael rubs his eyes. He hates it when Lilly’s complaints start making sense.

 

“I hear your silence and I’m going to offer you a bit of useful information. Mia will be at the Genovian Foundation for the Arts today at two o’clock. But if you _do_ realize you are an enormous idiot who needs to go course-correct the stupid decisions of his younger self, don’t change your mind in six months. If you’re with her, you’re with her. I can’t be the go-between for you two again. Do you know what a headache that was?”

 

“I’m hanging up now.”

 

“I had to make an Excel sheet just to keep track of what you were keeping secret from each other and what you weren’t. And so many stupid secrets, too! Do you really want to put me in that kind of distress—”

 

He hangs up.

 

Then he sits up, his head in his hands. This—this is _insane_ , and he knows what he should do, and he knows what he could do, but he’s not entirely sure which option belongs in which category anymore. There’s _ask Mia to try to work out a relationship again_ and there’s _live my normal life and let Mia live her royal life_ , and the one that’s always looked like a “should” is feeling much more like a “could” than he ever thought possible.

 

He looks up at the ceiling. “You should not go for a career in stand up!” he calls out.

 

If God is real and is listening, he does not bother to answer, so far as Michael can tell.

 

He gets off his bed and grabs his jacket.

  
  


 

Although the skies are overcast, people crowd the sidewalks outside the Genovian Foundation for the Arts, anyway, with little Mia banners and merchandise and one or two kids with the limited edition Princess Amelia doll. She’s undoubtedly the most popular royal in the world—not that Michael keeps up with these things, okay, he’s just morbidly curious—and he feels an odd swell of pride. Not because of the number of people, but because of the genuine excitement humming in the air. After all these years, Mia is still exactly the girl who used to sit with him in the garage, planning backpacking trips and jamming to his songs.

 

If there’s anything that would give him confidence in what he’s about to do, it’s this: in spite of it all, Mia is still the same woman he’s been in love with for the better half of his life.

 

The crowd begins to murmur, and then breaks out into cheers as Mia’s car rounds the corner. Michael’s heart starts pounding hard when the door opens, and then he sees the top of her head, and then she’s right there in front of him, waving to the crowd.

 

She moves slowly down the line, creating a memorable and heartfelt moment for each person she speaks with. She signs autographs. She smiles for the cameras. With each step she takes, Michael gets that much closer to a heart attack.

 

And then she is right in front of him. He holds out a receipt, the only piece of paper he’d managed to find in his car. “Can I get an autograph?” he asks.

 

A pause.

 

Her eyes widen. She looks up at him. The rest of the crowd fades out, leaving only him and her and her hand brushing his.

 

“You’re here,” she says.

 

“Lilly called me,” he shrugs. His ears are burning, almost certainly bright red. “I thought this might be my last chance.”

 

“Last—chance?”

 

“Princess,” someone says.

 

Michael manages to tear his eyes away from Mia and look up. There’s Joseph, materialized out of thin air, giving Mia a stern look—but there’s a twinkle in his eye.

 

“Perhaps we can, ah—escort this gentleman to another location for this conversation?”

 

Mia blinks at him. Then she comes into herself. “Oh, right,” she says, her brow knitting together. “Right.” She gives Michael a shy smile, and then she turns up the voltage and returns to her duties.

 

Michael follows Joseph back to the cars. He can barely think with all the adrenaline and fear rushing through him, but Joseph puts a strong hand on his shoulder. He’s smiling.

 

Michael takes this as an encouragement, and slides into the car.

 

After an eternity, Mia appears at the car door. Michael instinctively ducks out of view of the cameras as Mia gives her last waves and then folds herself into the seat with the grace earned from many years of practice. She waves and waves, but once they’re out on the road, she slumps back into her seat and looks at him.

 

“Michael—what are you—”

 

“I was all wrong,” he says, all in a rush. “I mean—at the time I was just—just scared. But I didn’t know that six years later, I’d still feel so—” He stops, unsure of how to continue.

 

“So…” she prompts.

 

He closes his eyes. He can’t look at her while he says this.

 

“There’s never going to be anyone for me but you,” he says.

 

He waits. All he can hear is road noise and distant honking horns.

 

But then he feels her hand on his arm. He squints one eye open, and there she is smiling at him.

 

“Me too,” she says. She rests her head against the back of the seat. His heart pounds in his chest. “And I know,” she continues, “That it’s hard for you, with the politics and the press and—I respect that, I really do—”

 

“Mia.”

 

“But I don’t think we got it right, you know? I just wanted you to change and I couldn’t really see what you were going through—it didn’t even occur to me that _I_ could change—”

 

“Mia—” He grabs her hand and squeezes it tight. “Don’t say that. Most of what happened was my fault. I’m sorry.”

 

They sit still for a minute, looking at each other. He rubs his thumb against her hand, trying not to smile too large and wide in case she sees just how desperately happy he is.

 

“And what about now?” she asks softly.

 

He shrugs. “Well, if I need to put in my application for your royal boyfriend, I’ve really built up a good resume. I volunteer weekly teaching music to kids at the after school center.”

 

He pauses, waiting for her to smile. She always wanted him to do more charity work, insisting that he’d love it. But he never did until they were broken up and he was back in San Francisco all alone, and he discovered that of course, she was right all along.

 

“That’s good,” she says.

 

“And I speak better French than you.”

 

“Oh, come on. How am I supposed to live up to your freakishly talented skills at learning other languages?”

 

“I also learned Mandarin.”

 

“When did you do that?”

 

“I didn’t just mope over you in San Francisco,” he teases. “I went out and moped in other places in the world, too.”

 

Her jaw falls open in mock-anger. “Did you go on our world backpacking trip without me?”

 

“No, I went to language school and joined a band in China,” he laughs. “It was a weird year.”

 

“I’ll say.” She shakes her head in disbelief. “What else you got?”

 

“Well—Lilly bullied me into volunteering for the Obama campaign. It was—stressful. And I worked as a part-time tour guide for a historical foundation for two years. Our clients called me ‘reserved and distant to the point of being cold’ but they also called me ‘weirdly captivating,’ so I thought that went pretty well.”

 

“Sounds about right,” she says with a little frown, her eyes glittering.

 

“Also, I’m terrible in social situations, I will definitely offend most foreign dignitaries with my poor manners, I have a degree in music education—so, completely useless—and I am a commoner.”

 

“A very cute commoner.”

 

He laughs and squeezes her hand. “I can’t promise this is going to work,” he says. “But I want to try.”

 

She looks back at him. His heart threatens to pound right out of his chest.

 

“Me too.”

 

She leans forward to kiss him. When their lips meet, something clicks into place in his brain. This is what he’s been missing. Mia leaning into him, deepening the kiss. Mia stopping to smile before kissing him again. Mia.

 

She moves back to look at him, her eyes searching his. “You know,” she says quietly, “All the reasons we broke up are still there.”

 

He puts his palm against her cheek. “All the reasons we got together are still there, too.”

 

She nods, then leans forward and rests her forehead against his. “I missed you all the time.”

 

“Me too,” he says, pulling her closer to him. “Me too.”

  
  


 

As it turns out, the punchline of the joke goes like this:

 

Michael Moscovitz, an unsuccessful San Francisco musician, weds Mia Thermopolis, otherwise known as the Princess of Genovia, on his thirty-first birthday. The weather is warm and sunny all day, and every time he looks for Mia, she’s smiling back at him.

 

This is definitely some sort of joke. But he thinks maybe—as he pulls Mia toward him and presses a kiss against her temple and her arm curls around his waist—maybe he’s the one who gets to have the last laugh.


End file.
